Furze the Cruel

by John Trevena

A horse galloped up. The sound of its iron shoes suggested frost, and so did the girl's breathing. She was wondering what her father was doing. He was a village cobbler, and a strict Methodist, fairly straight himself, and without sympathy for sinners. She moved, trod on some filth, and cried out. A man's voice answered and told her roughly to be quiet. Then Pendoggat groped his way in and felt towards her.

He had come in an angry mood, prepared to punish the girl, and to make her suffer, for having dared to flaunt with young Pugsley before his eyes in Tavistock. He had brought his whip into the linhay, with some notion of using it, and of drawing the girl's blood, as he had drawn it with the sprig of gorse at the beginning of his courtship. But inside the dreary foul-smelling place his feelings changed. Possibly it was because he was out of the wild wind, sheltered from it by the cracked cob walls, or perhaps he felt himself in chapel; for when he took hold of Thomasine and pulled her to him he felt nothing but tenderness, and the desire in him then was not to punish, nor even to rebuke her, but to preach, to tell her something of the love of God, to point out to her how wicked she had been to yield to him, and how certain was the doom which would come upon her for doing so. These feelings also passed when he had the girl in his arms, feeling her soft neck, her big lips, her hot blood-filled cheeks, and her knees trembling against his. For the time passion went away and Pendoggat was a lover; a weak and foolish being, intoxicated by that which has always been to mankind, and always must be, what the fragrance of the lime-blossom is to the bee. Even Pendoggat had that something in him which theologians say was made in heaven, or at least outside this earth; and he was to know in that dirty linhay, with moisture around and dung below, the best and tenderest moments of his life. He was to enter, if only for once, that wonderful land of perennial spring flowers where Boodles and Aubrey wandered, reading their fairy-tales in each other's eyes.

"Been here long, my jewel?" he said, caressing her.

Thomasine could see nothing except a sort of suggestion of cobwebby breath and the outline of a man's head; but she could hear and feel; and these faculties were sharpened by the absence of vision. She did not know who the man was. Pendoggat had galloped up to the linhay, Pendoggat had entered and seized her, and then had disappeared to make way for some one else. He had, as it were, pushed young Pugsley into her arms and left them alone together, only her old sweetheart had never caressed her in that way, with a devotional fondness and a kind of religious touch. Pugsley's courtship had been more in the nature of a duty. If she had been his goddess he had worshipped her in a Protestant manner, with rather the attitude of an agnostic going to church because it was right and proper; but now she was receiving the full Catholic ritual of love, the flowers, incense, and religious warmth. This was all new to Thomasine, and it seemed to awaken something in her, some chord of tenderness which had never been aroused before, some vague desire to give a life of attention and devotion to some one, to any one, who would reward her by holding her like that.

"Who be ye?" she murmured.

"The man who loves you, who has loved you ever since he put his eyes upon you," he answered. "I was angry with you, my beautiful strong girl. You went off with that young fellow at the fair when I'd told you not to. He's not for you, my precious. You are mine, and I am going to have you, and keep you, and bite the life out of you if you torment me. Your mouth's as hot as fire, and your body pricks me like a furze-bush. Throw your arms around me and hold on—hold on as tight as the devil holds us, and let me love you like God loves."

He buried his lips in her neck, and bit her like a dog playing with a rabbit.

"I waited on the bridge all day," faltered Thomasine, merely making the statement, not venturing a reproof. She wanted to go on, and explain how young Pugsley had forced himself upon her and compelled her to go with him, only she could not find the words.

"I couldn't get away from Annie. She stuck to me like a pin," he muttered. "I'm going to get away from her this winter, leave her, go off with you somewhere, anywhere, get off Dartmoor and go where you like. Heaven or hell, it's the same to me, if I've got you."

This was all strange language to Thomasine. Passion she comprehended, but the poetry and romance of love, even in the wild and distorted form in which it was being presented, were beyond her. She could not understand the real meaning of the awakening of that tenderness in her, which was the womanhood trying to respond, and to make her, like Boodles, a creature of love, but failing because it could not get through the mass of flesh and ignorance, just as the seed too deeply planted can only struggle, but must fail, to grow into the light. She felt it would be pleasant to go away with Pendoggat if he was going to love her like that. She would be something of a lady; have a servant under her, perhaps. Thomasine was actually thinking. She would have a parlour to keep locked up; be the equal of the Chegwiddens; far above the village cobbler her father, and nearly as good as the idol-maker of Birmingham. That Pendoggat loved her was certain. He would not have lost his senses and behaved as he had done if he did not love her. Thomasine, like most young women, believed as much as she wanted to, believed that men are as good as their word, and that love and brute passion are synonymous terms. Once upon a time she had been taught how to read, write, and reckon; and she had forgotten most of that. She had not been taught that love is like the flower of the Agave: rare, and not always once in a lifetime; that passion is a wayside weed everywhere. Perhaps if she had been taught that she would not have forgotten.